Sunday, August 21, 2011

...So Are the Days of Our Lives

Other than boring mom stuff you're probably wondering what fills my days. I'll breeze past the boring stuff like laundry and grocery shopping and admit that in the few moments I have left to myself I have become fond of online shopping and getting free samples and generally trying to find deals though I do draw the line at hoarding 300 tubes of toothpaste. I grew up in a house where we never lacked in toiletries so perhaps I'm a tad sensitive but there is no logical reason you'd ever need that much of anything before it goes stale anyway. Since Trevor doesn't like clothies and he's home with the kid most of the time we consume disposables and watching my son poop away our money is sobering so if I can save a few bucks I try to. I figure every buck I can save is a buck he can use toward college, and when you put it into that perspective it seems silly not to try. Cloth nappies are not an exponentially big savings when you take into account the energy it takes to wash those things repeatedly and the time it takes out of your day to actively take care of it. Time is money after all and if you spend hours trying to clean poop off of a diaper instead of spending hours with your kid...well, that's an overall waste because you never get that time back with your baby. Trust me, my kid is already six months old. I have no idea when that happened except that now it's here and he's BIG.

I enjoy drinking coffee. I can't drink like, 10 cups a day because I'd be in the bathroom nonstop and I have other things to do, but I spend a lot of time cold brewing iced coffee, making espresso, Vietnamese Iced coffee or looking at keurigs (I have not yet committed to purchasing one but I do that with all small kitchen appliances. I also dream of a Sodastream seltzer/soda machine and a bread machine). Summer is the best time of experimentation because who wants to drink hot coffee when it's 100 degrees out? Not this lady. I tolerate Dunkin Donuts but I'd pretty much rather drink anything else other than that. $2 for a cup full of ice and watery coffee always bums me out. I don't smoke. I don't get my nails done. I wash my own dog in the bathtub. I get a haircut every six months at best. I am a low maintenance lady but the one thing I like each day that makes me feel like a grown up is a cup of joe.

I write for the baby instead of the blog. (Sorry blog.) I'm trying to cut back on my media exposure actually. I stopped reading salacious gossip blogs and I don't have time for too much television anyway. I can't remember the last time I even heard a good song because the radio is terrible. I'm even trying to cut back on facebook because I don't see the value anymore. Anyone I really care about does not post every single day because they're too busy living their lives to bother posting dumb stuff about it every.single.day. The great irony is that the only people with time to post every single day post the dull and insipid things I don't care about, like Farmville. How I loathe Farmville. It's easier to not log in and not see it and not be pissed off. I was reading an article on yahoo! about how teens are using it and are essentially addicted to the immediate validation of their peers and the number of "likes" they receive. We're all starved for validation from others that our lives are good, that we're doing the right things, that we're pretty, that we're thin, that we're smart, the kids are beautiful, the husband is great...but if you're living a false life on facebook in order to receive praise then the praise is completely empty and meaningless anyhow.

I don't scrapbook because I hate all the effort of shopping for paper and stickers and cut out things...but I don't want this part of our lives to sail by without some documentation so I've been really interested in photo books and canvas pictures and just tastefully keeping something to remind us of right now. Is the house covered in pictures of the baby? Of course not. He's got like 18 more years with us and many awkward school pictures for me to hang up. I'm not in any rush, but we have a lot of house and therefore I have to think about where I'd like to place things. I got Trevor a new camera for his last birthday but I'm usually the one wielding it. Possibly because I'm the only one who read the instruction manual for it.

(Who can possibly resist taking pictures of that gorgeous dog? Or his frito paws?)